Who was the highest-paid actor for a single film?
It should come as no surprise to absolutely anyone that the US movie industry is a serious financial game, consistently raking in the green Benjamins month on month. As of 2022, the industry is worth $95.45 billion, and whilst much of this goes into mammoth production costs, a good slice also goes into the wages of the iconic movie stars that have made cinema such a well-oiled machine for generations.
For years, it was the gleaming smile of Tom Cruise who dominated the Hollywood silver screen, and more recently, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson became the highest-paid actor in the industry, thanks to his newfound success in the Fast & Furious franchise, among other successes. But whilst it comes as no surprise that Cruise and Johnson are iconic screen stars, the actor who has taken home the single biggest cheque for a film may prompt you to double-take.
Two actors in the history of cinema have been handed over $100 million for a single film, with the influential Hollywood star Will Smith being one of the lucky duo. In 2012, Smith was handed the eight-figure sum to re-appear as Agent J in the sequel movie Men in Black III, starring alongside Josh Brolin, Emma Thompson, Nicole Scherzinger and Bill Hader, with Sony shelling out the cash to make sure it earned over $620 million worldwide.
Though, whilst you may think that the biggest paycheck would have come in the 21st century, this feat was actually achieved in 1999 when Bruce Willis was handed a whopping $115 million for his role in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense.
The secret to the actor’s financial success in the creepy psychological thriller was in the extremely lucrative deal he negotiated for himself before he took on the project. Agreeing to a $20 million salary to play the co-starring role of Dr. Malcolm Crowe, Willis also wrangled 17% of the film’s global box office gross in addition to rights to its home video sales, all of which totalled up to a tidy sum of $115 million.
Best known for its iconic twist, Shyamalan’s film tells the story of a frightened Philadelphia boy who communicates with spirits and seeks the help of a child psychologist. “I see dead people,” the boy, played by Haley Joel Osment, tells the psychologist (Willis) in one of the most memorable lines of dialogue in the history of the medium, with the man unaware that he himself is a spectre who died long ago.
Though it may seem baffling, M. Night Shyamalan cleverly engineers the moment and lays secret clues throughout the film, which, if you rewatch it, works perfectly to set up the classic twist.
As the second-highest-grossing movie of 1999, The Sixth Sense took home a worldwide total of over $570 million at the box office and went on to become the top-selling DVD of 2000, generating $173,320,000 from the home video market. As a result, Willis enjoyed a trip to the Academy Awards and a paycheck to the tune of over $100 million. Not too bad for a few months’ work.
